WINTER FROST

CHAPTER 1: THE PHONE CALL (PART II)

RAVEN POV

The flights were exactly as awful as I’d expected.

Thirty six hours of airports, delays, bad coffee, and way too much time trapped with my own thoughts. I tried to sleep. Tried to edit photos. I tried to do anything except think about what I was flying toward.

It didn’t work.

By the time the small charter plane began its descent toward the private airstrip outside Frostfall territory, I felt completely drained, my eyes were gritty from exhaustion. My muscles ached from hours of sitting. And my wolf the part of me I’d spent years ignoring was stirring restlessly under my skin for the first time in forever.

She knew. Somehow, she always knew when we were close to home. Close to the pack. Not going there.

The plane touched down on the snow dusted runway, and I glimpsed the Frostfall Mountains rising in the distance, jagged and white against the gray November sky. Beautiful and brutal. Just like I remembered. Just like the people who lived in their shadow.

My hands were clamped so tightly on the armrests that my knuckles had gone white.

“You okay, miss?” The pilot asked as I gathered my camera bag and single suitcase. I traveled light. Always had.

“Fine." I lied. “Just tired.”

He gave me a look that said he didn’t believe me, but he wasn’t going to push it. “Someone meeting you?”

“My sister.”

And sure enough, she was there. Skye had cut her hair into a sleek bob since I’d last seen her, filling out into a woman, not the girl I remembered. Twenty three suited her.

She was wearing black, and the sight of it made everything suddenly, horribly real.

“Raven.” She crossed the tarmac in three long strides and pulled me into a hug that smelled like home pine, snow, and pack. “You made it.”

I hugged her back harder than I intended. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here sooner. Sorry I wasn’t here at all.”

“You’re here now.” She pulled back, studying me with those sharp gray eyes ours, Dad’s. “That’s what matters.”

I wanted to believe her. I wanted to think that showing up could somehow fix seven years of absence, of birthdays and holidays missed, of moments I’d chosen my camera over my family. But her eyes told me she was trying to convince herself, too.

“Come on." She said, grabbing my suitcase before I could protest. “Mom’s at the house. She’s… well, she’s Mom. You know.”

I did. Mom had perfected silent disappointment. It was practically her superpower.

Skye’s truck sat at the edge of the airstrip the same beat up Ford Dad had taught us to drive in. Seeing it made my throat tight.

“He was in that truck when it happened.” Skye said quietly, following my gaze. “Driving back from checking the northern boundary. Just… pulled over, and that was it. Heart attack. The pack doctor said he probably didn’t suffer.”

Probably. What a useless word.

I climbed into the passenger seat, and Skye started the engine. The radio came on automatically some country station Dad always loved but she quickly turned it off. The silence was worse.

We drove through pack territory slowly. Everything looked familiar, yet completely different. Same winding roads through dense pine forests. Same landmarks I had memorized as a kid. But new houses had popped up, new buildings, signs that life had moved forward without me.

“Population’s up.” Skye said, reading my thoughts like always. We weren’t twins she was four years younger but somehow we were in sync. “Almost three hundred now. Colton’s been recruiting wolves from smaller packs, offering sanctuary.”

There it was. His name. Hanging in the air like a live grenade.

I stared out the window. Said nothing.

“You’re going to have to talk about him eventually." Skye said.

“No, I don’t.”

“Raven—”

“Skye, I’m here for Dad’s funeral and your wedding. That’s it. I don’t need to dig up old history with Colton Ironfang. We’re adults. We’ll be polite. It’ll be fine.”

Even I didn’t believe it, and Skye’s tightened jaw told me she knew it too.

“It’s not old history when the whole pack still talks about it." She said. “When Mom can’t say your name without looking sad. When Colton—”

“What?” I snapped. “When Colton what?”

She went quiet, carefully navigating a turn. “Nothing. Forget it.”

“Skye.”

“Just… be ready, okay? He’s different. We’re all different. Seven years is a long time.”

Not long enough, I thought. My wolf was already restless, desperate for even a hint of his scent.

We pulled up to my childhood home a sprawling log cabin that had housed Frost Alphas for generations. Smoke curled from the chimney, cars filled the driveway. The pack was probably inside, paying respects, bringing casseroles, doing what packs always did.

I used to love this house. Used to imagine raising my own kids here someday, carrying on the legacy, being the good daughter everyone expected. Now it felt like a beautiful cage.

“Ready?” Skye asked.

No. Absolutely not.

“Yeah.” I said, gripping my camera bag like a shield. “Let’s get this over with.”

We walked up the porch steps together, and Skye pushed open the front door.

The smell hit me first. Pack. Home. Family. And under it all, mixed into everything like a thread I couldn’t ignore his scent. Pine and snow and something wild that made my wolf stir and whine.

He was here. Somewhere in this house.

Colton. My rejected mate. The man I’d spent seven years trying to forget.

I stepped inside, and the room went silent. Twenty faces turned toward me some sympathetic, some curious, some openly hostile.

And at the back, speaking quietly with Mom, was him.

Colton Ironfang had always been stunning. Even at seventeen, he was the kind of beautiful that made girls forget how to think. But the boy I left behind was gone.

He was bigger. Broader. His dark hair was longer, pulled back in a knot that showed the sharp angles of his face. He wore authority like a second skin—Alpha in every line of his body. And when his eyes met mine across the crowded room, they were the coldest thing I'd ever seen.

Colder than the Arctic wind.

Colder than the Alaska winter.

Colder than the space where my heart used to be.

He looked at me like I was a stranger. Like I was nothing.

And the mate bonded the one I’d tried to bury under seven years and six continents flared to life like fire running through my veins. Still there. Still burning. Still impossible to ignore.

Colton's jaw tightened. He said something to my mother, gave me one more glacial look, and walked out the back door without a word.

Welcome home, I thought bitterly. This was going to be even harder than I’d imagined.